Let me now briefly compare the folk-tales of Germany with those of the Scotch Highlands.
It cannot, I think, escape notice in reading Grimm’s collection, that a very large number of the tales bear a strong impress of quiet domesticity. They are very properly named “household” in more senses than one. And this is a matter not merely of style but of substance. The incidents are, to a vast extent, domestic in character. There is no occasion to give a long list of the tales I refer to. I may mention as types “The Three Spinners,” which turns entirely on the results of domestic drudgery to the female figure; and “Thrush-Beard,” a tale analogous to “The Taming of the Shrew” legend. But this domestic stamp becomes more fully apparent when we bring into contrast the Highland stories. Among these there are indeed parallels to Grimm; but they are relatively few, and there is a whole class of incidents and stories of which little trace is found in the German collection. The domestic incident all but disappears. The tales are more romantic, picturesque, extravagant. The giants and monsters are more frequent and fearful. The stories of helping animals—and this is very characteristic—though not entirely absent, are far less numerous than in Grimm.
Now, turning to Ireland, we find that both classes of story meet upon Irish soil. Without making any allowance for the imperfect collection of our folk-lore, and the quantity that must have been lost owing to the lateness of our attempts to rescue it, it must be admitted that we have the domestic story fairly well developed. The two tales from Grimm that I have named, as well as many others, have the closest possible parallels in Kennedy, and I have myself met with additional examples on the coast of Connaught. The romantic and extravagant class of tales which flourish in the Highlands have also good representatives in our oral literature. Some specimens may be read in this volume. In one story, “Gilla of the Enchantments,” is found a striking combination of the two. The story is, in part, a close variant of Kennedy’s “Twelve Wild Geese,” but it also contains, in addition to other matter, the wild incident of the daily cutting off of the brothers’ heads by the sister, which is equally wanting in the variant to be found in Grimm.